Sook Hee Kim Weidman, 67, died of lung cancer on Oct. 17, 2015, at Mount Vernon Hospital in Alexandria. She was born on Oct. 20, 1947 in Kunsan, Korea. She was the youngest of nine children of Young Sang Kim and Hyo Nyo Kwak.
Sook Hee studied Library Science at Ewha Women’s University in Seoul, Korea, graduating in 1969. She then immigrated to the United States and worked at the Korean Embassy in Washington, D.C., which is where she met her husband Stanley. She attended graduate school at Texas Woman’s University in Denton, Texas, graduating with a M.S. in Library Science in 1972. She and Stan were married in San Francisco, Calif. in 1974.
Sook Hee and Stan moved to Alexandria in 1975, and their children Katie and Chris were born several years later. Sook Hee was a devoted mother who was always involved in her children’s activities, volunteering at the Waynewood Elementary School Library and for the Waynewood Swim Team for many years, among other things.
She eventually returned to the work force, initially part-time as a librarian for SAIC, then full-time as a catalog librarian at The Library of Congress, where she worked for about 20 years. She retired from her position as Section Head of the Northeast Asia Team at The Library of Congress in 2013. In her free time she and Stan went on many mission trips with their church — twice to Uganda, twice to Guatemala, and once to Bolivia.
Sook Hee is survived by her husband of 40 years, Stanley Weidman, and her daughter Katie Kim Wolf. She was preceded in death by her son Christopher Weidman. Sook Hee is also survived by her sisters Sooja Kim of Alexandria and Soon Hee Kim of Seoul, Korea, and by her brothers Kyoung Eup Kim of Centreville, Va., and Woo Up Kim of Apex, N.C., as well as her son-in-law Joe Wolf and grandsons Caleb, Joshua, Moses, and Asher Wolf of Alexandria.
The visitation and funeral service was held on Saturday, Oct. 24 at Demaine Funeral Home in Alexandria, followed by a committal service at Mount Comfort Cemetery. Donations in Sook Hee’s memory may be made to the American Institute of Cancer Research.